


and it's fine

by kira_khaleesi



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Breaking Up & Making Up, Earthquakes, F/M, Ficlet, Fluff and Angst, HEA Guaranteed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22914295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_khaleesi/pseuds/kira_khaleesi
Summary: A year after breaking up, Rey and Ben reconnect.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50
Collections: Kira's Songfics





	1. but it really got me thinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was driving when the earthquake happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is mostly mindless nonsense but hopefully somebody likes it.

Rey was driving when the earthquake happened. She never used to drive.

There was no logical reason for her to live two cities over from where she worked, and yet, she did. After walking out on him a year ago, Rey had put as much distance as possible between herself and Ben. He used to drive them everywhere. Now she drives herself an hour each way to work every day.

After a year of driving herself around, it’s grown on her, but sometimes she lies awake thinking about the little things. 

Things like him setting her coffee on the bedside table before he jumped in the shower. Like sitting beside him in the car, enjoying a peaceful silence.  
Rey didn’t feel it when the earthquake happened, and chalked the increased accidents on her commute home to idiot drivers. Arriving home to 10 missed calls from Finn and many more texts was when she realized something had occurred.

_“What do you mean you didn’t feel it, peanut it was a 7.9.”_

_Rey shrugged. “I was driving, I didn’t notice.”_

_“Well, are you okay?”_

_“I’m fine, are you and Poe good?”_

_“Yeah. We were a little shaken up, but nothing is damaged here and we’ve taken some deep breaths.”_

_Rey hummed in response, her mind elsewhere._

_“Peanut? Hello...earth to Rey.”_

_“Hey, yeah.”_

_“Something on your mind? You sure you're okay?”_

_Rey paused. “No...no, just, it’s weird, you know they tell us an earthquake’s coming and then it happened and I didn’t even notice.”_

_“Yeah, that must be weird.”_

_“Anyways thanks for checking in Finn, talk tomorrow. Love you.”_

_“Love you peanut.”_

She has spent the last hour since she hung up with Finn sitting on the couch staring at her phone. 

An earthquake, a serious one, happened. Buildings have been damaged, people are injured and some are probably dead.  
Disasters don’t care about your plans, your family, the words you left unsaid. They show up and wipe everything out. If the world was ending...

Her mind is occupied by memories of an old house with creaky floors and drafty windows, of Leia tsking that Ben should really get it renovated, and Han saying that he’d be happy to help out with any upgrades. Memories of a fight about home insurance - Rey thought it was unreasonable to pay more to include earthquake damage but Ben had insisted that they would need it. 

That fight was one of several that Rey had instigated.

All these years later and her childhood still scars her; Rey didn’t want to get left so she manufactured reasons to leave. Escalating things that had no reason to be taken so far and causing problems where there weren't any. 

Rey looks down at her phone screen, open to a contacts page. A contact she hasn’t spoken to in a year. 

Maybe he did renovate. Maybe he ended up upgrading the insurance. 

Maybe he sold the house.

Maybe somebody else lives there with him now.

But if the world was ending…

Rey selects his number and holds the phone to her ear as it dials.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!  
> leave a comment :) <3


	2. you weren't down for forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I know, you know, we know, you weren't down for forever and it's fine_

It didn’t scare Ben when the earthquake happened. 

Standing in the kitchen, washing dishes while reruns of Law & Order: Criminal Intent played on the tv in the living room, when the room started shaking he dropped his dishes and ducked under the kitchen table. 

_“If you’re so serious about this earthquake thing you should probably get a bigger table for the kitchen.”_

_It had been a week since he had brought up the home insurance thing and Rey continued to needle him about it, rekindling the argument when he thought it had been resolved._

_Ben frowned at her, incredulous. “Why would we need a bigger kitchen table?”_

_“Because,” she waved her hand nonchalantly, “in the event of an earthquake we’d need to duck and cover and there’s no way you’ll fit under that table, you’re a refrigerator.”_

_Over the course of their relationship Rey often teased him - lovingly - about his size, giving him a wide variety of nicknames. Tree, mountain, boulder, the list goes on. Every time, her voice was playful and adoration obvious on her face._

_This time her voice was tinged with disdain._

A month after that conversation, after she’d packed her things and left him to wonder where it all went wrong, he did buy a bigger kitchen table to go with the upgraded home insurance. Hiding under the table, waiting for the room to stop shaking, Ben is thankful for her suggestion - the vitriol that had laced it notwithstanding. 

When he finally stands and returns to washing the dishes, he tries to imagine her reaction. If she’s sitting in her new apartment watching the same rerun - it is her fault he is watching Goren and Eames solve crimes in New York after all - and feeling scared. 

If she’s cooking - unlikely, but possible - and forgot to turn off the stove before taking cover, if what was dinner is now a small fire. 

Fleetingly he hopes that, whatever her reaction is to the earthquake, she is not alone. However much he may disagree with her assessment that they weren’t meant for each other, Ben bears no ill will towards Rey. 

He hopes that there is somebody there to help her through everything, even though she decided that the someone couldn’t be him.

When he finishes washing the dishes, his mother calls to check in. 

Yet another thing he has Rey to thank for. Before she tumbled into his life, he hadn’t spoken to either of his parents in years. Now, his mother calls him to relay family gossip and his father drops by just to say hi. 

After assuring her that yes, he’s okay, no the house isn’t damaged, yes he’s sure he doesn’t want to join her and Ami for brunch tomorrow, they bid their goodbyes. Ben knows she’ll call him tomorrow after brunch to spill whatever “tea”, as she calls it, that Ami has shared.

Sighing, he sits down on the couch just in time to watch Goren give his customary end-of-episode monologue to the soon-to-be-arrested murderer. It took her leaving for Ben to really understand the appeal of the show - the reliability of the bad guys getting caught, the ride or die friendship of the leads - but now, he watches it regularly.

Later, after he has changed for bed and stands in front of the mirror brushing his teeth, the phone rings. Spitting and wiping his mouth, he jogs into the kitchen to pick it up.

The screen reads _REY JOHNSON - Incoming Call_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!


	3. all our fears would be irrelevant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If the world was ending you'd come over right?  
>  The sky'd be falling and I'd hold you tight,  
> And there wouldn't be a reason why,  
> We wouldn't even have to say goodbye. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is it! the end of my silly drabble based on a sad(ish) song.  
> if you haven't listened to it, the story will probably make more sense after.
> 
> thanks for reading :)

“Ben?”

He doesn’t respond right away, too shocked to have seen her name on his phone screen and shocked further still when she didn’t hang up.

“Ben?”

“Hey, Rey.” A year since he has heard her voice and it’s transcendent. Whatever reason she has for finally reaching out, he is eternally grateful and will do his best to keep her on the line.

“I’m sorry for calling so late, I don’t know why...I should’ve-”

“-I got a new table.” He blurts out to stop her from convincing herself to hang up.

Rey pauses.

“What?”

“You probably don’t remember, but you said if there was an earthquake I’d need a bigger kitchen table so I could fit under it.”

Quietly - so quietly he barely catches it - she says that she remembers.

“Well anyway...yeah I got a new table. Which was good because of the earthquake.”

Ben hears what sounds like a sniffle through the line, and then it hits him. There was an earthquake. A serious natural disaster has occurred, and his ex that he hasn’t spoken to in a year is on the phone with him.

“Rey where are you?”

“At my place.”

“Are you...are you hurt? Is your building damaged?” Now that he is certain she’s calling because of an emergency he cannot slow his brain down, imagining her stuck under a fallen shelf, covered in dust and debris.

“Ben I’m not hurt. My building is fine, no damage.”

He exhales.

“Oh thank God. I thought that was why you were calling and I started panicking.”

“Oh.” Rey is quiet. “No, it’s not an emergency.”

“Ok.”

Neither of them speak for a beat, and then: “Rey why did you call?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ok, I’m not complaining, it’s just kind of odd that after a-”

“-I lied.” She interrupts.

“What did you lie about?”

“So many things.”

Unsure of how to proceed, he asks “Like what?’

It takes her a minute, but once Rey starts her answer the words seem to tumble out of her.

“Like just now, when I said I didn’t know why I called; I know why. I called because I miss you and because I’m sorry and because and earthquake happened and all I could do was wonder if you were okay and think of that stupid fight that I started. I lied about that too, I didn’t give two shits about earthquake insurance and it’s your house. I lied when I said that we weren’t meant for each other, I lied when I said that I couldn’t do forever,” she is crying, and so is he. “Ben, I’m so sorry.”

They talk on the phone for a couple of hours, with Rey combing through details of her childhood that she had never shared while Ben listens thoughtfully. After, Ben asks some difficult questions that Rey is unable to answer, but that she says she will think about.

They agree to meet next week, to talk things over.

Earthquake insurance - among other things - was one of the fights that drove them apart. It seems only fitting to Ben that the actual earthquake might be what brings them back together. He knows that patching things up, relearning how to be together, and mending the parts of themselves that are broken will take time. It won’t be easy.

And he’s fine with that.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPZ99hxi4-A
> 
> this came to me while listening to Julia Michaels singing about the end of the world on my way to work this morning at 5:30am.  
> and so here we are, me avoiding my real life to throw these words down.


End file.
